Jimi Hendrix - Highway of Desire - Non-Album Tracks (1970)

Here's the second of the two Jimi Hendrix studio albums with his band the Band of Gypsys I've organized. I explained most of what I'm doing here in my previous post, so please read that if you haven't already.

That one, which I call "Message to Love," covers the Band of Gypsys studio recordings done in December 1969. This one covers their studio recordings from January 1970. As I explained in that previous post, that's all the band did during their short life, since they broke up by the end of January.

Even though the band didn't record that much in the studio, it luckily turns out that there's enough unique material for two albums of nearly 50 minutes of music each.

Two of the songs here, "Stepping Stone" and "Izabella," were actually released as the A- and B-sides to a single in 1970. But for whatever reason, Hendrix got cold feet and cancelled the single shortly after it was released, leaving it an obscurity. I used the actual versions put out on the single, which can be hard to find. Both songs were partially recorded in late 1969 and January 1970, but I put them in this album since that's when they were finished.

Everything else but those two songs were recorded on either January 21 or January 23, 1970. Four of the songs have been officially released (two on the "Jimi Hendrix Experience" box set, and one each on "South Saturn Delta" and "Blues").

However, the four remaining songs still remain officially unreleased, and those need some special explanation. I'm referring to: "Highway of Broken Hearts," "Highway of Desire," "Seven Dollars in My Pocket," and "Highway of Desire, Part 2." They were all recorded in one continuous jam on January 23, and one might argue that they're essentially all part of one very long song. But I prefer to treat them as separate songs. I did some research into this using some books on Hendrix and they're generally considered separate songs, but they're obviously closely related, especially "Highway of Desire" and "Highway of Desire, Part 2." They're all bluesy, and in similar tempos. I tried listening to them all together, and I felt they blended together in a forgettable way. They sounded more interesting to me by separating them and interspersing them with different songs, so that's what I've done here.

If you're very familiar with Hendrix's music, you'll notice that many of the songs on this album or the other Band of Gypsys I just posted contain songs that appeared on posthumous albums like "The Cry of Love" and "First Rays of the New Rising Sun." As it turns out, Hendrix recorded so many new songs in the last year of his life that I have another stray tracks album to go of songs after January 1970. Plus, I have other Hendrix stuff to post after that, such as lots of his acoustic recordings.

01 Stepping Stone (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Highway of Broken Hearts (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Izabella (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Country Blues [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Highway of Desire (Jimi Hendrix)
06 Power of Soul (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Seven Dollars in My Pocket (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Astro Man (Jimi Hendrix)
09 Highway of Desire, Part 2 (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Once I Had a Woman (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15121513/JimiH_1970b_HighwyofDesire_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used a 1968 concert poster designed by Rick Griffin. Since I was able to come up with two albums's worth of Band of Gypsys material, I picked the art because they were obviously designed to be similar to each other, yet different.